The message was clear following Tuesday night’s drought summit at Arkansas Tech University — local farmers are battling an agricultural crisis, and the small amount of rain the state has received does not change that.

A capacity crowd attended the meeting inside Doc Bryan Auditorium, hosted by the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture. Five speakers each tackled a different subject ranging from the tax implications of selling a cowherd to dealing with insect pests during a drought.

Kent Dollar of Certified Public Accountants, Inc. opened with words from the Bible, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe and it will be yours.” He then added, “We’ve been praying for rain. Just because our prayers aren’t answered today doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be.”

“We recognize agriculture is our nation’s No. 1 industry. And this drought is an agriculture crisis. Our goal is to provide farmers with the tools they need to survive this drought, and to better prepare them to survive future droughts.”

The crisis effects the local economy in ways one might not expect. Farmers are being forced to sell their cows, which means they won’t buy vaccines, farm equipment, feed or fencing.

“At some point there is going to be a shortage of beef. Actually, there was already a shortage of beef before this happened,” Lance Kirkpatrick, county agent of agriculture in Logan County, said. “Some older folks may sell off their cows and decide they are through. They won’t be able to afford to get back into it next year. It’s a risky thing to get into in the first place. New ranchers can’t buy land and pay for it with cattle.”

Farmers came from all across the state looking for solutions to the crisis.

“You have to make decisions on whether you’ll keep cattle and what you will feed them with in the winter,” Rancher Buck Gunnet, who traveled from Vilonia, said. “There’s no forage. No grass. The water situation is bad. The hay crop is at about 50 percent with no regrowth.”

Gunnet said that the heat isn’t helping matters, either. “The cows are stressed under this kind of heat. They don’t do as well.”

Arkansas is the 19th-largest cattle-producing state in the nation which provides 1.17 percent of the nation’s beef.

“We (Arkansans) are selling our ranches and our factories,” Gunnet said. “We’re going to be in recovery for four or five years.”

The meeting lasted nearly three hours and ended with an open forum where local farmers asked questions.